Upcoming articles on CRISPR-Cas and probiotics

I spent some time putting together drafts of two articles that may be of interest:

1. How CRISPR-Cas systems (combinations of RNA and proteins) can be used as very precise tools to target and kill specific bacteria of interest in a mixed community, leaving non-targeted neutral or “good” bacteria alone. These tools require further development before they can be used in medicine, but hold so much promise! This article was written for the website The Conversation.

2. How some isolates of probiotic bacterial strains originating in the human gut can affect the lining of your intestine- in the study I reference, some of the isolates (notably Bifidobacterium bifidus) that were found were able to actually repair damage done to the gut lining by a molecule known as tumour necrosis factor alpha. This is exciting news! This article was written for the website probiotics.org.